The first person to ever publish a blog post back in 1994 was journalist Justin Hall. Since then, blogging has only increased in popularity and is still relevant in a social media and video-focused online world.
But what is a blog, anyway? It’s an online journal where a person, group, or business writes about their news, thoughts, and beliefs. And if you’re wondering, “what is the purpose of a blog?” then you’re in the right place!
For individuals, blogs can help create a personal brand and generate income. And for businesses, blogs can help you build a loyal following and customer base.
Read more about the purpose of a blog and how it can support your objectives in this simple blog guide!
Blogs can be one whole website or a part of a website; the latter is often the case in business websites. In both cases, every new blog post you create is a new web page on your site.
The more web pages you have, the more reason visitors have to stick around. It is that simple!
Let’s say you have a coaching business website. Without a blog, you might have the following pages on your website:
And that’s it! This doesn’t give your visitors a chance to learn a lot about you. But with a blog, you could have the following extra pages:
Ideas for blog posts are endless. Visitors are far more likely to find your website in the first place the more web pages you have. Plus, they are more likely to become invested and interested in your services.
One of the best blog tips anyone could give you is to use it to prove your expertise. No matter what business you are in, you want your potential customers to know that you are the best at what you do. This makes you more trustworthy and will help you stand out above your competitors.
You should write blog posts on every aspect of your business. Let’s say you run a beauty salon. You could write blog posts on the following subjects:
Customers are far more likely to book an appointment with a beauty technician with detailed blog posts like these. It shows they have a passion for the field and have the knowledge to back up their claims.
If you asked 100 digital marketers, “what is the purpose of a blog?” then the most common answer will be this one. One of the top blog benefits is its ability to improve your website’s rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Search engines like Google prefer websites that are regularly updated with new information. Publishing new blog posts weekly and refreshing old ones as needed is a great way to stay in Google’s good books.
You can also turn a good blog into the best blog by using SEO techniques. Search Engine Optimization is a toolbox full of strategies you can apply to any web content to optimize it for Google. These are techniques like:
The more techniques you apply to your blog content, the higher it will rank in SERPs. And the higher your blog content ranks, the more people will find and visit your website.
Some digital marketers and business owners think that social media is the only way to engage with your community. That’s not true! Blogs are a great way to start a dialogue with your followers or customers in a space where you’re in control.
You can ask questions at the end of your blog posts and encourage people to answer them. Install comment boxes at the end of every post so they can do this.
You could also write posts based on FAQs, run competitions, and share success stories. This will help your followers feel like they have a personal connection with you and that you’re not a faceless corporation.
Did you know that you can also use other blogs to attract people to your website? You can do this by guest blogging outreach. Contact another website and offer to write a blog post on their site in exchange for plugging your own website via a link.
This will introduce your website to a brand new audience that didn’t know you existed before. You could reciprocate with your own blog.
Guest blogging outreach is also a great way to build your backlink profile. When external websites link to your website, it is a virtual vote of confidence from their website to yours. These are high-ranking factors in Google SERPs.
But for websites to do this, you need to have pages they can actually link to! They are far more likely to share a link to an interesting blog post you wrote rather than your contact page.
One of the first purposes of business blogs was to share company news and events. And while many companies choose to do this via social media and email newsletters, sharing it via blog is still a good idea.
Only current subscribers can see information shared in a newsletter. But anyone, in the present or future, can read the blog post. Publishing the information on a blog post means you can go into more detail than on social media too.
Answering the question, “What is the purpose of a blog?” will be different for individuals and businesses. Now you know there are lots of purposes to creating a blog. It takes time and effort to build a successful blog but the benefits will be worth it.
Blogging is an essential part of any good digital marketing plan. But it’s still only one part! Check out our articles on social media to keep learning more.
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